Noem's DHS Restricted Bidding for Nearly $220 Million in Ads; She Told Senators It Was Competitive

Nearly $220 Million Through a Pool DHS Chose

On October 2, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rode a horse at Mount Rushmore while filming an ad, according to the caption of a department photograph that Fox News published.¹ Her department paid for advertising featuring her through two contracts, after restricting who could compete for them, with no public announcement.²³⁴ It has since committed nearly $220 million under those contracts.⁵ When a senator asked whether the work had been bid out, Noem said the contracts "went out to a competitive bid" and that career officials had chosen the vendors.²⁶

Some of the money reached a firm that had managed Noem's campaign advertising.⁷⁸ That is the charge: public contracting restricted to a chosen pool, then described to Congress as a competitive bid.³²

President Trump nominated Noem.⁹ Two days after that Senate hearing, he announced her replacement in a post that said she had "served us well" and announced a new envoy appointment for her.¹⁰⁶

DHS signed the two contracts on February 13, 2025, with Safe America Media LLC and People Who Think, L.L.C.⁴¹¹¹² Senator Peter Welch's November 19 letter, citing news reporting, identified People Who Think's head, Jay Connaughton, as a former Trump campaign adviser.¹³ The Immediate Office of the Secretary and its Office of Public Affairs requested the funding.⁴ On February 17, DHS launched the campaign to persuade people in the United States without authorization to leave and to discourage others from entering illegally; the launch featured Noem thanking Trump and relaying his warning of deportation.¹⁴

DHS justified the restriction by invoking unusual and compelling urgency, citing Trump's January 20, 2025 declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.³ Its written justification ruled out a public announcement.³

Justification and Approval for Other Than Full and Open Competition, solicitation 70RDA225R00000015 (redacted version), section on publicising the requirement³

An announcement for this action will not be published at SAM.gov. It is exempt from the requirement per the exception at FAR 5.202(a)(2).

Delay, DHS said, would let smugglers' misinformation spread and illegal crossings rise, and the companies identified in its market research had the expertise, media-buying relationships and capacity to begin immediately.³ Three offers came in, the award data reports.⁴¹² The justification describes an intended pool of three, market research identifying four companies, and a final vendor list naming only Safe America Media and People Who Think.³

DHS posted the redacted justification on SAM.gov on March 7, 22 days after signing the contracts.¹⁵³ It published the explanation for restricting the opportunity after the opportunity had passed.³¹⁵ That was within the 30-day publication period the urgency rule permits.¹⁶¹⁵

By October 10, 2026, DHS had committed $219,974,499.32 under the contracts and the orders placed against them.⁴¹⁷⁵ That is money obligated, not a measure of cash already paid; Fox News separately reported financial figures showing approximately $185 million in advertising expenditure, a different measure.⁵¹⁸ Of the committed total, $39,974,000 covered two ICE recruitment advertising and content orders rather than the border campaign.⁴¹⁷¹⁹

DHS's answer to the cost is that the ads worked.¹²⁰ Noem told the Senate they had been extremely effective, PBS reported.²⁰ The department's broader defense, given to Fox News by Lauren Bis, was that the campaign prompted more than 2.2 million self-deportations and saved taxpayers more than $39 billion.¹ DHS's published claims do not prove that the campaign caused those departures: the 2.2 million total does not distinguish people persuaded by ads from those leaving because of enforcement, incentives or other reasons.²¹¹

In a January 12, 2026 analysis for the Center for Migration Studies of New York, researcher Edward Kissam disputed DHS's earlier self-deportation estimates and estimated about 200,000 self-deportations for 2025.²² His figure is also an estimate, and his analysis addresses departures overall, not these ads.²²

Whatever the ads achieved, contractors outside DHS's chosen pool lost the opportunity to compete for the initial awards, and DHS gave up the safeguard of an openly advertised competition for the speed it said it needed.³²³²⁴

The Production Firm Had Worked for Noem's Political Campaign

The firm is the Strategy Group. Welch and Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote on March 6, 2026 that Noem had confirmed at the Senate hearing that it managed advertising for her 2022 campaign for governor.⁷ Fox News identified Benjamin Yoho as the firm's CEO.¹⁸ Yoho is married to Tricia McLaughlin, and the senators' letter describes the firm's DHS subcontract while McLaughlin served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.⁷

In its own March 3 statement, the Strategy Group said it held a subcontract with Safe America for limited production services, not a direct DHS contract, and that Safe America paid it $226,137.17 for film shoots and video and radio advertisements.⁸ On March 26, Blumenthal and Welch reported a later accounting: they said the Strategy Group confirmed $286,137 in taxpayer-funded campaign spending.²⁵ That included, they said, a $60,000 signing bonus benefiting the firm and $20,000 in horse rentals.²⁵

Federal subaward data does not show the subcontract the firm itself acknowledged: on October 10, 2026, the records for both prime contracts and all three Safe America orders returned zero subawards.^11122627198

The department's defense is specific. DHS General Counsel James Percival told Fox News Digital: "Nothing illegal or unethical occurred with respect to these contracts."¹⁸ DHS said contractors selected their own subcontractors and that McLaughlin recused herself from interactions with them.¹⁸

The record and the rules also limit a claim of criminal self-dealing. No payment to Noem personally has been established.⁷¹¹ The criminal conflicts statute covers personal and substantial participation in a matter known to involve a specified financial interest, and the impartiality regulation provides a review process for concerns arising outside its specified relationships.²⁸²⁹ A search of the federal exclusions list returned no exclusion or debarment for Safe America Media on October 10.³⁰

None of that erases the acknowledged production payment to a firm connected to Noem or explains why an emergency procurement was the right way to buy advertising featuring the Secretary.⁸⁷³²

Competitive Bidding Without the Restrictions

At the Senate Judiciary hearing on March 3, 2026, Republican Senator John Kennedy challenged how a $220 million advertising campaign featuring Noem squared with concern for taxpayer waste, PBS reported.²⁰ He asked whether DHS had bid out the service contracts.²⁶ Her answer is recorded in the March 16 referral from Judiciary ranking members Richard Durbin and Jamie Raskin, which states that she testified under oath at both the Senate and House hearings.²

March 3 Senate Judiciary testimony, quoted in the March 16 referral by Richard Durbin and Jamie Raskin²

Yes, they did. They went out to a competitive bid, and career officials at the Department chose who would do those advertising commercials.

The answer quoted in the referral does not mention the restricted pool or the lack of a public announcement.²³

The strongest legal defense is that restricted bidding can still be bidding.²⁴⁴ Congress created the urgency exception, DHS produced and published the required justification, and the federal data reports three offers and codes the awards as competition after exclusion of sources.^243116315411 The seven later orders follow a separate ordering rule, so the absence of a new Part 6 justification for each does not by itself establish a violation; that rule still generally requires a fair opportunity for the contract holders to be considered, subject to stated exceptions.³²⁴¹⁷

The same defense reaches her testimony. In Bronston v. United States, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a literally true but unresponsive answer is not perjury even if intended to mislead.³³ Three offers came in, so Noem's description of a competitive bid could be literally true, and the false-statements and perjury statutes also require knowledge or willfulness that the contract data does not establish.^4343533 Those rules answer a criminal accusation, not whether her account candidly explained how DHS chose its vendors.

The next day, March 4, Noem appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.³⁶ Durbin and Raskin wrote that, when confronted there, she conceded the process was not competitive; their letter characterizes the concession without quoting her words.² It does quote her insisting that the contracting was "all done correctly, all done legally."²

On March 16, Durbin and Raskin referred her to the Attorney General for investigation under the false-statements and perjury statutes.² A Justice Department spokesperson called the referral a political stunt that day, ABC News reported.³⁷

Who Approved the Contracts

Noem also denied political appointee involvement in the media contract.² For the later spending, she had claimed personal control. On June 11, 2025, after the original awards, she issued a memorandum reserving personal approval of grant and contract awards over $100,000.⁴³⁸ One week later, DHS placed a $12,860,000 advertising order with People Who Think.¹⁷ A June 24 instruction, reproduced with her memorandum in a Senate minority staff report, extended the requirement expressly to orders and modifications.³⁸ Four more advertising orders followed, among them a $65 million domestic campaign order.^4172719 In August, DHS publicly stated that Noem personally reviewed and approved contracts above $100,000.³⁹

The procurement entries identify the requesting offices, not Noem's approval of individual actions.⁴²⁷¹⁹ But DHS's public claim of her personal review made her role in later advertising spending a question Congress was entitled to ask.³⁹²

Noem had statutory authority to retain contract approval.⁴⁰ The rule had a cost outside advertising: Senate minority staff found that it delayed approval or left approval pending for 1,034 contracts, grants or disaster-assistance awards as of September 8, 2025, and concluded that the delays violated the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act.³⁸ One delayed renewal, of a Texas disaster call center, left flood survivors unable to reach anyone on a FEMA assistance line for days, the report found.³⁸ Noem's successor rescinded the rule on April 1, 2026, the Associated Press reported.⁴¹

Then there is her adviser. At the Senate hearing, Blumenthal asked Noem whether Corey Lewandowski had a role in approving contracts.⁴² After describing him as a special government employee, she answered "No" when the senator pressed; at the House hearing, according to the referral, she described him as an adviser without decision-making authority.⁴²² On March 4, 2026, ProPublica reported that internal records showed Lewandowski personally approved a multimillion-dollar equipment contract the previous summer, a contract separate from the advertising awards.⁴³ Four current and former DHS officials, it reported, described his approval of numerous contracts and his sign-off before large requests reached Noem.⁴³ DHS repeated its denial to ProPublica.⁴³ On March 4, Blumenthal demanded that she amend her testimony about Lewandowski's role in approving contracts.⁴⁴

On March 2, 2026, the day before the Senate hearing, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari reported systematic obstruction of his access and said Noem had requested a list of all pending matters in his office, including criminal investigations, to consider terminating some under her statutory authority.⁴⁵ He said she had not invoked her authority to limit or deny his office's access; his attachment does not list these advertising contracts.⁴⁵ ABC News reported on April 2, citing sources, that the department's Inspector General was investigating contracts handled under Noem and Lewandowski's influence; the Inspector General declined to confirm or deny criminal or administrative investigations.⁴⁶

On March 26, Blumenthal and Welch asked Noem's successor to cooperate with their contracting inquiry.²⁵ On September 14, they said DHS had not substantively responded and had produced no responsive records.⁴⁷

The President Kept and Publicly Praised Her

Trump nominated Noem on January 20, 2025, and the Senate confirmed her 59-34.⁹⁴⁸ On March 21, 2025, two ranking House Democrats announced their request for the campaign's documents and communications.⁴⁹ Eleven and a half months after that demand, Trump announced Noem's replacement.⁴⁹¹⁰⁵⁰ During that interval, DHS raised the contracts' shared ceiling from $200 million to $240 million and placed more orders.⁴¹⁷

The announcement came on March 5, 2026, two days after the Senate hearing.¹⁰⁶ In the same post, Trump praised Noem for "numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)" and announced her new envoy appointment.¹⁰ Neither his post nor Noem's message to employees gives a reason for the change; House Judiciary Democrats separately wrote that the advertising campaign was widely reported as a principal reason for her removal.¹⁰⁵⁰⁵¹ Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as Secretary on March 24, just over a year after the demand.⁵²⁴⁹ The State Department listed Noem as Special Envoy in a May 6 delegation notice.⁵³

Trump's reported defense is that he did not know: House Judiciary Democrats reported that he told Reuters he had not known about the campaign and NBC News that he had not been thrilled with it.⁵¹ Noem said otherwise. She had told Kennedy that Trump tasked her with getting the message out, and the referral quotes her affirming that he knew about and approved the spending.² His knowledge of the awards remains disputed. His March 5 post is not: it documents public support for Noem's performance.⁵¹²¹⁰

History limits an argument built on appointments. In 1843 the House rejected an inquiry into John Tyler's allegedly abusive appointments and his retention of officials the Senate had rejected; Noem had Senate confirmation.⁵⁴⁴⁸ The 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap produced no corresponding charge against his President.⁵⁴ In 1922-23 the Judiciary Committee found no ground to proceed against Attorney General Harry Daugherty.⁵⁵ The standard is Article II, Section 4, which Hamilton's Federalist No. 65 interprets in terms of abuse of public trust.⁵⁶⁵⁷

The Impeachment Argument

DHS restricted who could compete for a public contract, committed nearly $220 million across the resulting contracts, and financed ads featuring its Secretary.³⁵² A firm connected to her political campaign was paid for production work.⁷⁸ Asked in the Senate whether the work had been bid out, Noem described a competitive bid.² Senators later said DHS had produced no responsive records about political influence over contracting.⁴⁷

The argument for impeaching Trump is that keeping, and then publicly praising, the Secretary responsible for this spending and this account to Congress was a failure of the President's public trust.^9491025657 It asks Congress to judge how he used executive power: whom he chose, whom he kept and whom he publicly supported. Taxpayers were owed a clear explanation of the restricted bidding. Congress was owed answers about political influence over the spending.